Just A Glimpse

As some of you probably know, I'm firmly against the theory which states that if a movie becomes a cult classic or makes over a certain amount of money than a sequel must automatically be made. Some movies are just perfect enough they don't require any more details - no one is left wondering what happened to the characters or what happened next. However, movie studios rarely care about the actual movie, they just want to make more money and they want to make it now. As such, that sequel is getting made no matter what. If the original writer wants to work on something else they will find another writer to carve out a script and if the original star doesn't want to be involved they will find someone that looks enough like them to make it work or get someone younger and call it a prequel. Even though these moves usually scare a fair amount of people away they still make enough money to cover production costs. The profits won't be as great as the original, but they will still be profits. What I think those movie studios really need is a window into the future to see how these movies are going to turn out. A sample size, if you will. For the first time ever, we actually had that last week.

A few days ago a video clip surfaced on the internet. In the clip an amused-looking Matthew Broderick throws open the curtains and asks, "How could I possibly be expected to concentrate on work on a day like this?" Of course, that is an adaptation of his famous line from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" so naturally this got people buzzing that this clip might just be a teaser for a sequel to the 1986 hit. It wasn't until a few hours later that we learned it was just a snippet from a Honda commercial which will air during Sunday's Super Bowl. [Sidebar: Seriously, we're teasing the commercials now? As if every angle of this game hasn't already been examined enough.]  Since then the entire three-minute commercial has become available online and having watched it, it's fine. It's not the best Super Bowl commercial in history, but it hits enough of the nostalgic moments from the movie to do the job. Normally I would be railing against one of my favorite movies in history being bastardized to sell a car I would probably never fit into, but not this time. Because what this commercial did, besides attempt to sell me a car, was show the whole world that there is absolutely no reason to make a Ferris Bueller, Part 2.

I've heard rumors about a script for a "Ferris" sequel floating around for years. It was going to take place a few years down the line and instead of high school Ferris was going to be ditching out of a day of work and then spending the day going on various adventures while simultaneously trying to avoid his boss. Not exactly "The Godfather II", but it might have been amusing if the script was well-written. For whatever reason it never got made and I think this commercial showed us that the time for a Ferris sequel has gone by. I'm not saying Matthew Broderick is a thousand years old, but he is officially too old to be ditching out of work to go on adventures. I mean, wouldn't a guy like Ferris Bueller be an executive by now? They don't need to make excuses to not show up for work - they just call in from the golf course. And you can't do a Ferris Bueller movie without Broderick, so getting someone else to play the part just wouldn't work (this is why the TV show based on the movie failed). What that leaves us with is a plot that would more likely involved Ferris Bueller, Jr's day off and the movie would end with a cameo from Broderick where he would deliver his lines with all the gusto of someone reading them off cue cards and appearing as if he only showed up because they promised to pay him in cash. (This is how we ended up with the dreck that was "Dumb & Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd.") There might have been a window to make a "Ferris Bueller" sequel, but that window closed about a decade ago.

I understand that I probably care more about some of these films than the people who were in them, because by this time they are so jaded by Hollywood that they don't even care. But the history of movies is littered with ill-advised sequels and I would really (maybe foolishly) like to think that if the people involved could have seen how they would turn out than they would have thought twice about putting the movies into production. (Honestly, was anyone proud of the way "Roadhouse 2" looked when it was finished? Because I certainly wasn't proud of myself for watching it.) My biggest fear is that this commercial will actually inspire someone to revisit the idea of a Ferris sequel. After all, it was a Super Bowl commercial which launched Betty White into a career resurgence at the age of 88. Ferris Bueller was trending on Twitter for a couple of days, mostly about how much people loved that movie. Well, I'm going to take it upon myself to let anyone who is thinking about it know that while the original is pretty much universally loved, I highly doubt people would be as enthralled by a sequel. They got it right the first time and if the commercial is an idea of what going back for seconds would look like then here's hoping they decide against it.